I don't know anything about this guy, but based on the discourse every time he comes up, Ed Zitron is a more polarizing figure for HNers than even Trump. Everyone here loves trying to dunk on the guy, yet he's apparently living rent free in everyone's social media feeds.
How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
371–380 of 1001 posts
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#372I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedgin…
>I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedging in one camp or the other in their takes.
There are a myriad of people out there who have brought up genuine issues that AI presents, or preexisting issues that AI is exacerbating.
This series of articles is perhaps the best long form critique of AI as both a technology and an industry I've encountered [1].
[1] https://aphyr.com/posts/420-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#373Easy to claim things as wrong without prodiving any facts. Can I try? > But when people bring him up, they're of course not generally citing his anger Wrong. > Google has been increasing the relative priority of revenue over the user experience over time Wrong. > I'm curious what people do after being on the wrong side Wrong. Some of the claims categorized as "wrong" are also completely true, such as training hitting…
> Some of the claims categorized as "wrong" are also completely true, such as training hitting diminishing returns. New models are barely an improvement and most people I know stuck on Opus 4.6 over any newer one for example.
OK, but the first instance of a claim of diminishing returns was in February 2024, when GPT-4 was the best model available. Do you really think improvement since then has been minimal?
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be living in a bubble. There are tons of developers still coding by hand, and many industries that don't trust machine generated code in general.
Do they also not trust their code review processes?
Have you considered that they do trust their code review processes, and that they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process?
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#375One thing I’m observing in these comments is a willingness of folks to project their own predictions onto Ed’s statements when validating their plausibility. Eg. “I think he’s wrong about the timing but I do expect AI companies to go to zero.” You can do that, but then you’re no longer discussing his predictions. You’re discussing your predictions, and your own positioning. Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engage…
On the flip side, I also see many people taking this thread as an opportunity to shit on Zitron as a person, and not "discussing his prediction". Incompetent/ blow hard/ dishonest are ones I remember off the top of my head.
AI by itself, is surprisingly polarized; Ed Zitron even more so.
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#376I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…
"I believe we're reaching the upper limits about what generative AI can do and how accurate its outputs can be."
This was said in February 2024. This is months before GPT-4o released. GPT 4.5 was released a year later.
I don't know anyone holding on to models of GPT 4.5 caliber, yet know 4o. ChatGPT 4o and 4.5 score 8 and 14 points on Artificial Analysis benchmarks. [1]
For perspective, Qwen 3.6 27B, which can be ran on single GPU setups, scores 3-5x that on modern benchmarks.
I don't know why anyone would even make a claim like that in the first place. It's like saying "Computers are never going to get faster". I feel like we could run out of sand and still have faster machines over time. Just a silly thing to say.
[1] https://artificialanalysis.ai/?models=muse-spark-1-2%2Cgemin...
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#377[flagged]
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#378One thing I’m observing in these comments is a willingness of folks to project their own predictions onto Ed’s statements when validating their plausibility. Eg. “I think he’s wrong about the timing but I do expect AI companies to go to zero.” You can do that, but then you’re no longer discussing his predictions. You’re discussing your predictions, and your own positioning. Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engage…
Why is Zitron’s repute evaluated entirely on the basis of failed predictions? Predictions are incredibly hard. AI enthusiasts and thought leaders have made so many demonstrably incorrect predictions it’s hard to keep track. Based on this metric, Altman and Amodei should never be taken seriously again.
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#379zitron is a jester. He knows his audience and plays it well. It is incredibly tiring to listen to his lies, but so are the AI boosters. I think it is net zero
Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> After looking at Nvidia's orderbook, it's a reasonable conclusion that nothing bad will happen for at least another year. In which case Ed Zitron is off by at least a year. Zitron is fairly clear that nothing is going to happen for a year or so — he says himself that he thinks there's another round of funding possible for both OpenAI and Anthropic.
Idk about that. A bunch of his wrong predictions were predicated on things turning sour sooner than a "year or so" than now.
Right, but you know the thing. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Predicting the medium future is hardest.
Markets don't just pre-plan their behaviour three years earlier and act it out lock-step. Other circumstances can change. By now, the world's financial press has covered some of the scariest aspects of this, and the situation has evolved.
There are other moves (the OpenAI/Blackrock AI debt securitization idea for one) that could delay it even further.
Zitron, I get the impression, has moved on to talking about the horsemen of the bubble apocalypse — talking about banner events that would need to happen for his predictions to be true. This is safer ground for a forecaster, because every forecast affects the future.
His shorter term predictions have not all failed by any means: he described Oracle's woes before the ratings agency downgraded them specifically because of OpenAI.
But most of his predictions will be irrelevant if the insane securitization plan happens. Because it will stop being about an AI bubble then; the worst risk will be the collapse of the entire US economy. It will need a different kind of analyst.
Me, I don't really care either way. I'm not on the cloud AI hype train, I don't work for a YC company, I'm not an American taxpayer so I will not be directly on the hook, and as Americans like to point out, the UK economy is behind on the whole AI thing so (unlike Ireland, which the USA will 100% leave to fail) we are ironically insulated. Maybe a couple of small British investment banks will fail and a pension fund or two will default.
For the most part we'll just watch the flames.
I do enjoy watching a Brit — albeit an ex-pat — upset a bunch of po-faced AI evangelists. It’s like “Itanic” all over again.
I think he is directionally correct. My own impression is that the bubble will burst at the worst time, and so my assessment is that, given the way this is entangled with the functioning of the USA as an economic power and with the future of the US political hard right, it will therefore darkly but poetically burst sometime around Labor Day 2028, which is the worst possible time.